z

Young Writers Society


E - Everyone

Focaliser

by EmeraldEyes


I will break your heart and eat it

Left lying on the floor, defeated

Calling out: "Old dear Eliza!"

"Will you be my focaliser?"


Rejection was the mighty action

Couldn't reach his satisfaction

Prospect of his mistress daunting

But when she left his life a haunting


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Tue Jul 08, 2014 4:47 am
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Aley wrote a review...



Hello Emerald~

I think you created an interesting juxtaposition between the two stanzas of this poem with the first one being the female speaker in first person, and the second stanza being the omniscient third person narrator over the male's side of the story. While it doesn't make this poem very consistent, it is an interesting comparison.

Personally I feel this poem needs the most help with the rhyme you've got here. I like to see that you're using alternative rhymes with "Eliza" and "focaliser" but I really think that your struggle to get the right rhyme has made an inconsistent story that doesn't really fit with the first line. While I can accept the change in point of view, I think that changing from "break your heart" to "Will you be my focaliser" is too big of a shift from the heartbreak he was experiencing just in the first line.

Here is how the story goes to me. Hopefully reading this rough outline will help you identify where your narrative shifted, and what you can edit to better match the story.

We break up [break your heart and eat it]
You're moping [lying on the floor]
You're insulting me [old Eliza]
You want me to give you perspective [focaliser]

rejection happened [mighty action]
He was dissatisfied [couldn't... satisfaction]
He's afraid of getting a lover [Prospects... mistress daunting]
She killed him. [haunting]

Out of these lines, most of them are based around the rhyming word, mostly because of the line break stress, but also because you create it in such a beat that you end at the end of the lines, regardless of your punctuation, which is scant. This sort of beat becomes repetitive fast and makes it easy to ignore the meaning behind words and just go with pretty sounds, like the french word, "focaliser" which, while can obtain meaning through context and googling, isn't very useful for most readers aside from the idea that he wants Eliza to focus for him. This just makes him sound like a needy cry-baby who'd be best left in the gutter anyway, and doesn't tell us much about the conviction this woman has to "eat [your heart]." There is no evidence of why he was even with this girl in the first place when he calls her "old" which is clearly an insult since telling a girl that is a bad idea.

His pleads would be more realistic if he was throwing a hissy fit and trying to throw something at her head for breaking his heart. Anger is an easy emotion to relate to in the few moments right after someone breaks up with someone else. That's why they say don't live with the person you're divorcing.

It takes a lot of guts and anger to eat someone's heart, so this line really doesn't fit with the rest of the poem because of it's outright malicious intent. The rest of them are just sort of blah about the relationship. The cool words like "defeated," "satisfaction," "prospect," "rejection," "daunting," and even "haunting" don't add much passion to the stanzas like the quick snippy first line that doesn't have a single double-syllabic word.

My suggestion would be to read more articles on rhyme to better understand how to avoid forced rhyme like "focaliser" and "haunting" or "satisfaction" [which really just contains a homonym at the end] by using more rhymes that are slant, internal, or easier to match a word with. Also, it might help, in my opinion, to edit the first line and add less emotion to it, or edit the rest of the poem and put in more of the anger from the main character, the girl. Instead of going to what he's doing, stay with her, and look at that rage she's built up.

As a challenge, I'd suggest re-reading the poem, and then closing your eyes/turn to a blank page, and ask yourself "what is a brief summary of what I just read." Try to make it just one sentence. From there, write a new poem dealing with that same sentence. See how the two work together and if the focus changed at all!

Aley




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Tue Jul 08, 2014 12:49 am
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shinobithief wrote a review...



I must be honest. I do not understand this poem. Still, I shall review it.
The rhyme was nice, I appreciate seeing something that is not a free-verse poem for once. You did a nice job.
I dislike saying this, but I urge you to make this longer. I know that can be really hard to do, especially when you are trying to incorporate rhyme, but please make it longer. I always adore short poems, but this one just seems a little cut off.
Also, in the first stanza, what is left lying on the floor? The "you" that you speak of or the broken/half eaten heart? It's just a little hard to tell, is all.
Other than that, I see no problems with this poem.
Thank you, and keep up the good work.





The first draft is a trip to the amusement park. The next drafts are returning there as a safety inspector.
— SunsetTree